ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
ORIGINAL: ColinWright
So in your scenarios you omit a certain quantity of AA on that basis? Since it's already assumed to be there by the game engine?
That's not what I'm saying. Make an effort to understand.
Bombers are assumed to already be taking precautions against AAA in their targets.
That's what's built in.
Otherwise, we would have to slash bomber efficacy whenever a target had AAA. There's just no basis for doing so.
Perhaps there is a rationale for providing a bomber
boost whenever the target totally lacks AAA, but I still think those are just footnote cases.
As so often, your remarks just fly in the face of historical reality.
What you are saying implies some 'normal' level of AA protection. A generic average, so to speak. Like the top speed of a family sedan. They can all do 100 mph. Few can do over 150 mph. That sort of distribution is what your argument implies.
That just wasn't the case. As I've previously noted, AA ability -- and the protection it afforded -- varied enormously. There was no norm, which is what your argument would require. There is also, parenthetically, absolutely no evidence any assumption of any such norm was built into the engine.
In fact, TOAW sets out the AA weapons that would afford significant protection. 2 cm Oerlikons, 40 mm Bofors, 3.7 inch AA, 'dual AA machineguns,' etc. The protection they afford isn't 'built in' -- any more than AT firepower is 'built in.'
The difficulty -- which is obvious, although you won't admit it -- is that TOAW attempts to model the effect of these weapons simply by having them shoot down planes. That -- although you have also attempted to deny this in the past as well -- simply doesn't work.
AA can shoot down planes. It does shoot down planes. The local police do plug a bad guy every now and then. But like the local police, AA exerts most of its effect through forcing its targets to change their behavior.
A classic example would be French ground attack aircraft in 1940. They went out on May 11-12 and attacked as their doctrine called for: low, straight, and right into the German columns. Got slaughtered.
Were they all shot down, though? Not at all. Most of the force was still there and serviceable. However, thereafter the French bombed from a considerable altitude -- and with considerably less effect.
That's how AA works -- and that's the effect AA weapons should exert. I don't see why this is so hard to accept.
Now, implementing such an effect might pose some problems -- but we never get that far. We get stuck with you denying the shortcoming is there at all. That's what I find so frustrating.
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These things -- the crippling effect of not having a volume based supply system, the 'soft' power of AA, that exposure to interdiction is a function of how much of a unit's potential movement allowance it expends, that wadis and rivers pose essentially similar military obstacles, that leg infantry units are not crippled as quickly or completely as other types of units by absence of supply -- range from at least tenable propositions to self-evident facts. But they all get short shrift with you. You won't admit there's any problem at all. The only problems that exist are those you feel you've discovered all by yourself and that you feel inclined to address.
It is as if Obama announced that the economy was fine, that there was no terrorist threat, that the budget deficit was a figment of his opponents' imagination, and that global warming wasn't happening. It's not really a very satisfactory way of improving the system -- simply denying each shortcoming as it is brought up.
Initially, I thought, well, if not Curtis, who? That is to say, better to have you around than nobody at all. I may even have entertained some delusion that you would be susceptible to either logical argument or historical fact. But I no longer think that. You are an actual and acutely harmful presence, as far as the development of TOAW goes. I'd rather have Ralph Tricky just cherry-pick whatever appeals to him and then ask people to test the results of the change.
